Takeshi Kitano considers making a third Outrage movie

Takeshi Kitano, the Japanese director/star of hardboiled yakuza thriller Outrage Beyond (sold in Toronto by Celluloid Dreams), is contemplating a third Outrage movie.

The first Outrage film, which marked Kitano’s full-blooded return to the gangster genre after years of making more experimental work, was a resounding box-office success in Japan in 2010, making over $7 million. Outrage Beyond is due to go out on more than 200 screens later this autumn, “the biggest release ever for a Takeshi Kiatno film” according to the movie’s promoters.

“My producers would like me to do a third one, depending on the box-office (for Outrage Beyond),” Kitano said.

However, he is also hatching various non-gangster projects. “I am playing with the idea of doing a period drama musical featuring physically handicapped actors,” Kitano revealed. “One of my great inspirations, although she wasn’t handicapped, is the late, great dancer Pina Bausch. I really like her work.”

Kitano is also hoping to make a “women’s movie.” “I do have some ideas for a love romance, a very pure romantic story involving a female character.” Some critics have complained about the complete lack of women characters in Outrage Beyond. Kitano defended their absence. “To portray family in a gangster film would involve too much personal attachment…you would get distracted from the portrayal of the ludicrousness of those male gangsters.”

Speaking in Venice this week, where his film premiered prior to its Toronto screening, Kitano poured scorn on the official Japanese response to last year’s huge earthquake in Japan in the spring of 2011. The disaster derailed Outrage Beyond, with shooting postponed for a full year until April 2012.

“After the earthquake, all of a sudden people said we needed to start supporting each other and that we needed bonding and love,” Kitano said. “All these slogans sound sweet to the ears but they are empty and self-indulgent. I hate that.”

What the earthquake actually revealed, Kiutano said, was that “the Japanese politicians were really, really powerless to deal with such catastrophes. Although they say they are working very, very hard for the reconstruction of post-earthquake Japan, the result is not forthcoming.”

Kitano said that Outrage Beyond was not intended as a straight sequel to Outrage. He was determined to make the film accessible and entertaining for a general audience, “and not too indulgent and artsy.”

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